During his Barcelona playing career, Abidal was, for lack of a better word, a warrior. His commitment to his team was absolute, as he dominated his side of the pitch. This was the player who headed the ground to clear a ball in a match against Sevilla, whose sideline-to-sideline range enabled a lot of what those great Pep Guardiola teams could do.

At the end of his Barcelona career, we remember the pictures of Abidal at a 2014 farewell press conference that was more like an ejection. Then club president Sandro Rosell sat next to the Frenchman and talked about how wonderful this was for him, even as the tears in Abidal’s eyes belied such proclamations.

After kicking around for a while before retiring, Abidal returned to the club in summer 2017 as an “ambassador”—that role occupied by former club greats who flit about the globe to make promotional appearances and play in legends games. That gig lasted about a year,...